


as strange a maze

by clarityhiding



Series: Team RedBird [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman Incorporated (Comics), Batwing (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Grayson (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Embedded Images, Gen, Mention of Minor Character Death, New 52
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7809964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarityhiding/pseuds/clarityhiding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't know," Lonnie says, nervously fingering the Bat pinned to his chest. "Batman really doesn't like anyone horning in on his territory."</p><p>"Trust me, Batman has way bigger things to worry about right now," Pru tells him. "Besides, you're Oracle's people, and that makes you pretty much the Care Bear Cousins of the Batfamily. Different shape, but totally able to join in on major team-ups and ass-kickings when necessary."</p><p>(The further adventures of Pru, assassin-turned-Oracle, and her merry band of misfits as they spy on spies, save the day, get genre-savvy on villains, and troll Robins II and III.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	as strange a maze

**Author's Note:**

> Minor character deaths are those of Damian and Dick. Since we all know how well those went in canon, I'm not even sure if I need to warn for them...? Whatever, covering my bases.
> 
> Immediately follows _this airy charm is for_. Comic-wise covers end/aftermath of Leviathan, that thing in Red Hood  & the Outlaws with the League of Assassins/Untitled, Teen Titans vs. Trigon, Forever Evil, Gothtopia, the Menace arc of Batwing, and some stuff from Grayson (whew!). I've monkey'd a little with comic timelines for plot reasons, also this is where this AU honestly starts to really diverge from canon, so if something looks off, it's probably for a good reason! 
> 
> This is an Enhanced Fanfic! I.e., I slapped together some arty things and popped them in the text because the HTML capabilities on AO3 are limited. So, y'know. I recommend not downloading and reading this in an e-reader because in my experience the images aren't included when you do that, even when you go through the trouble of writing out the alt-text for them? And the images are a part of the actual story.
> 
> As always, lately, this is un-beta'd, so please, _please_ let me know if you see typos/grammar errors/etc. I really _do_ want to hear about any/all of my mistakes. Seriously. All of them.

Not for the first time, Pru regrets that part of the price of slipping free from Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins was giving up all the friends she'd made over the years. Regrets that she's had to expend the effort to reestablish the connections she was forced to abandon the second time Prudence Wood went up in flames.

But Oracle needs a clean slate to work with, needs to come out of nowhere with no attached history. Part of Oracle's power was always that she knew what you wanted before you asked, that she operated from the shadows and appeared to do so largely without bias. Pru doesn't have the skills, information, or resources that Gordon had. She has incomplete knowledge of the way the world used to be, a decent command of Boolean search terms, and two talented hackers who can occasionally be persuaded to help her if she asks nicely enough.

With Lonnie's help, Pru is able to start laying the foundations for what she hopes will eventually grow into Oracle's information network. It helps that she has a familiarity with the shadier parts of the underworld than the kiddie circles Lonnie ran in before supposedly going straight. She can't use any of the connections Pru Wood made and cultivated, but she still knows locations, addresses, passcodes. Most importantly, she knows _who_ to talk to in order to get her foot in the door. Before, Z was the one who found those jobs that didn't come straight from Ra's, but Pru has always been good at watching, at listening, and she spent years following Z around.

So Pru works with what she knows and, with Lonnie's help, sets Oracle up on the dark web as an information broker. For once, Lonnie's anti-establishment ideals work in her favor and he doesn't even question her actions when she proceeds to deal with criminals and heroes with apparent equality, even as Tam side-eyes her and huffs indignantly.

To appease Tam's sense of right and wrong (to soothe Pru's own worries and fears), Pru creates and posts a blacklist in the warehouse she's using as a base; a rundown of those villains she refuses to help and forbids the others from engaging. The list isn't long, doesn't actually include everyone she won't touch, just the big ones—and every member of the Council of Spiders she can remember the name of. Mostly, Pru is working off a list she keeps in her head. People she dealt with in the past and knows the moral standards of, plus contacts listed in Red's files as acceptable risks. As it is, most of what she's doing comes down to selling information the clients would have eventually found on their own anyway.

Pru has a good time passing serious threats on to the Red-Headed League and letting them take care of the problems. Red Hood bitches every time, but Arsenal apparently bonded with Bluebird during their little Gotham team-up last winter, and Arsenal can usually convince the other members of his team to heed Oracle's warnings.

Either way, the long and short of it is that Pru's gone from being a gun-for-hire to something of an information broker, keeping fingers in more pies than even she can count. And, unlike others who have done the same in the past (unlike the original Oracle), she has a... unique perspective on what comes her way. Having played both sides of the game, watched and studied those falling all along the shifting gradient of morality, Pru likes to think she has a better understanding of motives, methods. Planned outcomes.

Something is brewing in the Gotham underworld, kicking up the shadows and stirring up trouble. Pru's been getting hints of things for months now, things out of the corner of her eye, snatches of conversation that pique her interest, but nothing definite. At first it all seemed to connect back to Leviathan, something she has vague memories of existing before the world hiccuped, but now. Now she wonders, because from what she recalls, Leviathan was focused on executing actions on a global scale, and this feels just a bit more personal.

It's probably nothing; more likely than not Pru's jumping at shadows. She's nowhere near the same level of genius of her predecessor was, and she knows her own viewpoint tends to skew towards the paranoid more often than not.

Still, better to be safe than sorry, and with some reluctance Pru narrows her focus and turns her attention a bit closer to home. If something's coming, she and hers had best be prepared.

* * *

_Posted in a Gotham warehouse owned by the Noh-Jay Consortium._  


* * *

> ` Posted at 03:17 by user ORACLE`
> 
> `In light of all the requests I've had lately re: Robin's skillset/movements/identity, I have gathered the following information and make it generally available, free of charge:`
> 
> `Yes, Robin has been trained by the League of Assassins. Yes, he does know how to use that sword. He doesn't always follow Batman's no-kill policy; in fact, Robin's body count is likely higher than yours. He's probably better than you. Don't even bother trying to take him down--Talia al Ghul is just using you as cannon-fodder because she can't be arsed to read up on how to parent. She does not expect you to succeed. She expects you to die. Messily.`
> 
> `Even if you think you have a foolproof plan, trust me--you don't. Robins never stay dead. And when they come back, they have a habit of doing so with a nasty case of VENGENCE.`

  


* * *

"You knew this was going to happen." Tim can't keep the anger out of his voice, the pain. Pain at the loss, anger that Oracle knew this was coming and did nothing to stop it. (Anger at himself for failing to take Oracle's warnings seriously.)

_"What are you on about now?"_

"You knew Robin was going to die." Hell, what had Oracle said? It was some throwaway line she fed him weeks ago when she was trying to talk Tim out of heading to Gotham to help with the Joker. Something about dead Bats, dead Robins in particular.

 _"Murderchild's dead? Like, for serious this time? Not faking it? Ugh, was it Ra's? Talia? I swear, that family has absolutely no idea of how to show affection."_ It's hard to tell through the filter scrambling her voice, but to Tim's ears it sounds like Oracle may honestly be disgusted by Damian's death. _"Knew it was bad news as soon as that bounty went out on him."_

"This is your fault," Tim insists, not about to let her get him off-track. "You knew this was going to happen—you _said_ more than one Robin was going to die, but you never said how to stop it."

_"Okay, first? I wasn't talking about murderchild when I said that. Secondly, even if I did know this was going to happen—which, for the record, I didn't—I wouldn't try to stop it, because character development and causality. Timeline integrity, what."_

"This isn't _character development_ ," Tim says angrily. "Robin is _dead_."

_"Mmm, yeah. Bats don't stay dead—there's always a Pit or a Random Act of God to set things right. If they're even actually dead in the first place. Are you going to go on a quest to bring back the spawn of Satan? Because if you are, I'd like to skip the throat-cutting portion this time around. Artificial larynxes are a bitch to maintain."_

Tim doesn't even know how to respond to that. "He's _dead_ ," he repeats, because Oracle is still being flippant, acting like she doesn't have any concept of the weight of the situation—a child died in the middle of a fight he shouldn't have been anywhere near, and this is on Tim. It's on Tim, because he and Damian may have never gotten along, but the kid was the closest thing Tim's ever had to a little brother, and Tim should have protected him. Should have prevented this. "A ten-year-old child is _dead_."

_"Again, historically, Robins don't stay dead. Actually, they're even less likely to die than your average Bat-person, since Robin IV technically never truly died. Though she also wasn't Robin at that point and it skews weird because of the Batgirl factor—not sure if that should count, though, since Batgirl happened after she came back from being not-dead. I'll have to get back to you on that."_

"There's never been a female Robin," Tim says, because he can't fix Damian's death, but at least he can correct Oracle on this.

_"And that, my friend, is what we call a damned shame. Cheer up, Red—Robin will be up and about and back to his normal murderous self in a year or two. And, hey! Going by the current data, there's a 50% chance he's not dead at all! That has to count for something, right?"_

* * *

In the aftermath of the shitstorm that was Talia al Ghul's final (ha, like Pru believes any of the rumors claiming the woman's gone for good—in Pru's experience al Ghuls are even less likely than Bats to stay dead) bid for attention from the men in her life, Pru instructs her people to lie low for a bit.

"The whole city is still on edge after Leviathan holding everyone hostage and pinning the blame on Batman, Inc.," she reminds them when there's a chorus of protests. "Sure, people are mainly pissed at the Batman and his buddies, but most can't tell one vigilante from another." Pru's never pretended to understand how it is that, for the general populace, there are basically two categories of vigilantes: Superman and everyone else. And that's not even getting into the fact that half the time Superboy ends up being mistaken for big blue himself.

Spoiler huffs and rolls her eyes. "It's not like you let us out on our own anyway," she grumbles, because Pru has a strict rule about underage vigilantes running around when they're only half-trained. So far, confiscating Spoiler's grapple between meetings has kept her grounded, but Pru knows it's only a matter of time before the girl figures out a way around that. Brown's tenacity has always been something Pru's admired.

"When you can go thirty minutes without shoving off your mask, we'll talk," Pru tells her before returning her attention to the group as a whole. "In the meantime, we're going to do trust exercises, because there's nothing like the Bats completely failing to handle their shit to remind you just how important trust is in this business."

"Okay, great, but," Bluebird interrupts her. "The Bats are all in disarray because of Robin kicking it and the city basically shutting down Batman, Inc., right? So who's cleaning up Leviathan now? GCPD totally isn't equipped to deal with brainwashed masses."

"I have it on good authority that Talia al Ghul's successor is taking care of that," Pru says, because Arsenal is a shady information broker's best friend and always has the juiciest gossip for her. It doesn't hurt that she saw some of Talia's long-term plans back when she was poking around in the League network before legging it lo those many months ago. (All of which reminds her—if Todd and his Red-Headed League are running the League of Assassins now, she should see if one of them can't finally grab certain items she needs. A thought for later.)

"But if you're really worried, all the Bat after-action reports on the Leviathan mess have been added to the network, courtesy of Red Robin. You can go through those in your free time and try to identify trouble spots."

On her left, Lonnie coughs and shuffles his feet. "Uh."

"Yes?" Pru refuses to address him by his chosen handle when she doesn't have to. She has _standards_.

"So, uh. I was looking at those? The reports? After they were added to the network earlier in the week?" He shifts uneasily, moves closer to the warehouse computer. "And, like, it's probably nothing? I mean, the name is in the clear, so I wasn't going to say anything, but there's also the final item on the list, and—"

"The _point_ ," Pru snaps, because Lonnie is fourteen and _will_ ramble if allowed.

"According to some guy called Wingman, the Bats got help against Leviathan from an organization called Spyral," Lonnie says. He grabs the keyboard from where it's propped in the chair and does something to the keys, throwing an image up on the screen. " _That's_ Spyral's logo. Icon, whatever."

A stylized eye, staring straight out from the center of a web.

"Bloody hell," Pru growls. "Fucking _spiders_."

* * *

> ` Oracle: Hey, so.`
> 
> `RedHood: ???`
> 
> `Oracle: Did you get the goods?`
> 
> `RedHood: How the fuck am I getting a signal out here?`
> 
> `Oracle: I have talented people.`
> 
> `Oracle: Did you get it?`
> 
> `RedHood: Only Shiva's on base. Did you want hair or blood or...?`
> 
> `Oracle: Both, if you can get them.`
> 
> `Oracle: It's ok if you only get samples from her. Didn't really expect them both to be there since Cain's always done his own thing.`
> 
> `RedHood: This is SO weird.`
> 
> `Oracle: But you like me, so you'll do it anyway? :)`
> 
> `RedHood: More like I like your intel. How did you know about the All Caste-Untitled-Lazarus connection?`
> 
> `Oracle: Magic.`
> 
> `Oracle: Also, I might've sorta hacked the League's servers a while back.`
> 
> `Oracle: And Ra's seriously needs to change his Lj password more often.`
> 
> `Oracle: Wait do people even know about Lj anymore or is that too far back for you youngsters?`
> 
> `Oracle: J/k, we're pretty much the same age, last I checked.`
> 
> `Oracle: Oh! Also, I have a freebie for you.`
> 
> `Oracle: Keep an eye on Arsenal while you're assassin-sitting.`
> 
> `RedHood: Do I want to know?`
> 
> `Oracle: Well, I mean.`
> 
> `Oracle: On the one hand, he and Jade make beautiful babies together. On the other, you might not be ready to break up the team yet on account of fatherhood?`
> 
> `Oracle: Just a thought.`

  


* * *

After the Joker (after the fallout with Bruce, after what happened with Damian), the penthouse is clearly compromised and not safe to stay in. Tim makes an executive decision and moves the Titan's base of operations to a yacht he 'acquired'. (He figures Bruce owes him at least this much after fucking them all over with the Joker.) Tim's hoping the move will also mean finally leaving all of Oracle's surveillance equipment behind.

He really should have known better.

 _"Wait, why are you the one who decides who rooms with whom? Do you seriously think they can't handle choosing their own rooms? Also, making them share is complete bullshit—this is a fucking mini-cruise ship, one thing you have plenty of is bedrooms,"_ is Oracle's contribution the first time Tim turns on his newly-installed computer.

"Studies on team-building have—"

_"Bullshit. If this was about team-building, you'd be sharing a room, too. Also, way to be sexist and small-minded with your room assignments—make the rooms gender-segregated but room the gay guy with the probable-bisexual? I am so disappointed in you, Red. This is just sad."_

"...are you done?" Tim groans, burying his head in his arms. Part of the reason he _left_ Gotham was to get away from Bruce's compulsive need to micromanage everything under the sun.

 _"Also, you should probably stop making googly eyes at your taken teammates,"_ Oracle observes. _"That shit isn't cool, plus WG will break you in two when you inevitably piss her off."_

"Aaand now you've officially veered into the realm of None of Your Business." This is worse than that time in junior high when Tim's dad decided they had to spend every weekend doing awkward father-son bonding.

 _"You've been acting off pretty often, lately, so this is your official warning that I've been reading up on operant conditioning,"_ Oracle says, somehow managing to sound even more menacing than usual.

"I suppose it would be too much to hope that you might be focusing on positive reinforcement?"

The weird, digital cackle Oracle lets loose in response is discordant and decidedly off-putting.

Tim sighs.

* * *

_Posted in a Gotham warehouse owned by the Noh-Jay Consortium._  


* * *

Trigon happens, because of course he does. As soon as the Titans stumbled across the ruins referring to him at Angor Wat, it was really only a matter of time. Red acts all surprised by the big bad's appearance, but Pru supposes that's only to be expected—Red has shown time and time again that he's not as genre-savvy as he used to be.

The kryptonite comes in handy once again as Red and the newly-arrived Beast Boy (another palette-swap, and Pru isn't sure how she feels about that) team up with Raven against the rest of the Teen Titans who, of course, went and got themselves mind-controlled.

"Well, this was only to be expected," Pru comments dryly as Red dodges another of Wonder Girl's wild punches.

 _"Just because there are parallels doesn't mean real life follows formulaic tropes,"_ Red grits out, because he apparently doesn't appreciate Pru calling him out on his failure to adequately heed her vague warnings in a timely manner.

"No, I mean the mind-control thing. You've been going all glowy-eyed lately, so. Nice to finally know the cause." At least Pru hopes Trigon's responsible for that. Things always get much too complicated when there are more than just two parties in play.

_"I. What?!"_

"You didn't think I was tasering you for shits and giggles, did you? Out-of-character behavior coupled with eerie red eyes is never a good sign." Honestly, it's like Red thinks Oracle doesn't know what she's doing just because she's mysterious and kind of a jackass. "Try appealing to their true natures some more, that usually works. Heart is a fucking awesome superpower."

_"I don't know you."_

"This sort of attitude is why the people you date keep hitting you in the face. Ping me if you need an assist, Oracle out." Walking into Lecture Hall 2C, Pru disconnects the call and slips her phone into her pocket. The last thing she needs is to be listening in on a questionable feed during class, especially considering today's guest speaker. Which is her own fault—Pru really should have known better than to take a Journalism class in Metropolis.

Though, on the plus side, help is close by if everything goes quite literally to hell for Red and the Titans in the next two hours. Still, Pru isn't sure the convenience is entirely worth listening to Clark Kent expound on the dying medium that is print journalism. Hopefully none of this will be on the final.

* * *

_"See, now aren't you glad I made you leave off on the mind-controlled snogging? The fallout from that would've been so much worse than this."_

"It disturbs me that you equate my wanting to have a relationship with mind-control," Tim says, though it's a token protest more than anything else, he's feeling so exhausted right now. The last time he felt this emotionally drained was following the intense fuckup that was the Titans' rescue of Superboy from N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

 _"Actually, I equate glowing red eyes and poor, out-of-character decision-making with mind-control,"_ Oracle says. _"But I can see how you could've confused the two. Since they're so similar and all."_

Tim is quiet for a minute, busy thinking. It's hard to argue with glowing red eyes, but still. He only has Oracle's word that she limited her electric shocks (and that's the other thing—he really needs to figure out how the hell she managed to shock him like that) to times when Trigon was controlling his actions. "You know. Operant conditioning could be viewed as a form of mind control."

 _"Ends justify the means, Red. Trust me, better to be slightly put off snogging for a few years than to have to deal with super-pissed off metas."_ She goes silent, no doubt to allow time for the implications of her words to sink in. He's starting to think Oracle never does anything that isn't carefully calculated.

Well.

Except for Directive 47. Tim's fairly certain Oracle does _that_ just to be a jerk.

* * *

Everyone is gathered in the warehouse, Pru walking them through intermediate-level disarming techniques, when all the screens in the room flicker to life. They all show the same message—"`THIS WORLD IS OURS`"—on a red-orange background. Now, Pru is still relatively new to the whole hero gig, but even she knows this can't bode well.

" _That_ looks suitably ominous," Bluebird says, dropping the staff Pru's insisting she learn how to use and making a beeline for the nearest computer terminal. Lonnie's right behind her, muttering to himself about how his system is airtight and this sort of hack should be impossible.

Flying Fox brings up her own staff and glances at Pru. "Oracle? Do you know what this is?"

"Well. It could be the Reach?" Pru wracks her memory, trying to recall who of all the various people(s) that tried to take over the planet in the past had the means to hack ridiculously-secure networks. "Aliens that have some kind of connection to Blue Beetle, but it doesn't seem likely—the Reach tend to be a lot sneakier. The OMACs just sort of showed up and took people over, didn't even bother with the warnings or announcements, I think..."

Setting her own staff aside, Pru strides over to a cabinet and opens it, digging around inside until she finds the cans of aerosol foot powder she picked up back when she decided to give Oracle a face and a team. Pru tosses a can to Spoiler, grabs a second for herself. "Spray the cameras on all the computers and surveillance equipment. If you can, disconnect the microphones while you're at it. Bluebird, see if you can't do the same for the equipment in your and Flying Fox's masks." As she talks, Pru tucks her own can under her arm long enough to reach back and pull apart the wires connecting the computer in her helmet to any kind of power source. The voice scrambler still works, being on a different system than the rest, but everything else is dead.

Spoiler sets to it right away, but Flying Fox holds back, lingering near Pru instead of heading over to see Bluebird like she should. "What's this all about?"

"Think about it—someone's compromised our very-secure system. It may be some small-time villain or even a Bat, but either way, if they can break Moneyspider's firewall, they can probably use our own equipment to keep tabs on any countermeasures we might take," Pru explains, already moving away from Flying Fox, headed for the nearest of the harder-to-find surveillance equipment.

"Oracle? They've locked us out of communications and I can't reestablish control over the computer," Lonnie says. It's clearly hurting him to admit it, and Bluebird lays a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently.

"The Titans?" Pru asks, because she has to know, has to learn Red's status.

"The direct line is blocked along with everything else."

Well, fuck. Not that Pru really expected anything less, but there was always the slim possibility that all her reinforcements and backups might actually count for something in a situation like this. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. First order of business is still blocking any cameras/trackers/feeds on ourselves and around the warehouse. Yes, you've all got trackers; don't worry, I will only ever activate them if you go MIA. The rest of the time, no one can even tell they're there."

Flying Fox snorts, probably because she continues to not take Pru seriously when she insists that heroes get kidnapped on a fairly frequent basis. "Right. And what about the nanites? If these guys can cack systems, it's only a matter of time before they take us all out of the picture with electric shocks."

"What nanites?" Bluebird demands, her hands dropping from her mask as she whirls around to fix Pru with a _look_.

"There aren't any nanites on or in anyone here," Pru says, rolling her eyes behind her mask.

"Uh huh. And I suppose you told Red Robin the same thing the first time you zapped him," Flying Fox says, because Tam is hellbent on undermining Pru's authority and fostering distrust and paranoia among the ranks whenever possible.

"I told you—those are part of a psych experiment. I haven't used them on anyone other than Red. And I only used them on him because he was possessed and acting like a fucking _idiot_ ," Pru snaps.

"Wow, we should definitely come back to that later," Spoiler says, tossing her can of foot powder to Pru to catch. "In the meantime, I've gotten all the stuff I know of, and we should probably turn the computer's sound back on so we know what the hell those whackos are saying." She gestures at the monitors. The message has disappeared from the screens to be replaced with what's apparently a live broadcast.

"Is that Superman?" Lonnie whispers, eyes wide as the camera focuses on someone who could be Superman's twin if you ignored the sneer on his face.

"God-fucking-dammit," Pru hisses as the Superman double launches into some speech. "Evil mirror-universe doubles. I fucking said it would happen, didn't I? Bloody well _told_ them and they just laughed me off." Honestly, she doesn't know why she bothers sharing intel with anyone besides Red and Tam—it's not like the Red-Headed League ever takes her seriously.

Pru misses whatever the asshole—'Ultraman'—on the screen says next, she's so caught up in trying to figure out a plan of action. She has contingencies for evil Red Robin, for evil mirror-universe doppelgangers of all the current crop of Teen Titans—she never considered the possibility of an evil Justice League (stupid, she knows— _anyone_ could have a mirror-universe duplicate; Pru's is probably her good twin with a dog and a loving, nuclear family).

"Shit," Lonnie says, staring at the screen. "They've got Nightwing."

As one, everyone stops what they're doing and turns their full attention to the screens. Like Pru, the others were only half-listening up until now—supervillain rants in general tend to be cliche and repetitive—but this is different. This is Nightwing, one of Gotham's own. And ‘Superwoman' is unmasking him.

"That's Richard Grayson," Spoiler says, eyes wide above her mask, fixed to the screen.

"Oh god," Flying Fox gasps, her voice cracking mid-word. " _Dick_."

Thankfully, no one else seems to notice Tam's slip-up, but Pru still starts talking quickly, hoping to distract everyone from the implications of Bruce Wayne's ward being Nightwing. "Right. So. Obviously nothing is sacred to these creeps, Rule Three included. We have no chance in hell of taking down an evil-reverse Justice League, leave them to the metas. _But_ , Ultradouche and his cronies are encouraging the villains of this world to cause as much chaos as possible, and we _can_ do something about that." She claps her hands and, after a moment's hesitation, activity restarts in the warehouse.

They finish covering cameras and shorting out comms, since it's more important than ever to stay off the radar of these invaders. Spoiler, whose uniform is the most low-tech after Lonnie's, grabs some paper and a marker and draws several Bat logos, pinning one to each of their chests. "GCPD is going to be overwhelmed and probably trying to take out any mask they don't recognize as a friendly," she explains.

"I don't know," Lonnie says, nervously fingering his Bat. "Batman really doesn't like anyone horning in on his territory."

"Trust me, Batman has way bigger things to worry about right now," Pru tells him, refusing to glance at the screens where Dick Grayson's mask-less face was a few minutes ago. "Besides, you're Oracle's people, and that makes you pretty much the Care Bear Cousins of the Batfamily. Different shape, but totally able to join in on major team-ups and ass-kickings when necessary."

Bluebird shoots her a weird look from where she's killing the video feed on Flying Fox's helmet. "Care Bear what?"

"Care Bear Cousins. Christ, I can't be the only one here who remembers the eighties."

"You're too young to remember the eighties," Flying Fox says.

Huh. That sounds... important. A thought to come back to at a later date, perhaps, when the fate of the world isn't at stake. "Whatever. Okay, communications are down, so we're on a buddy system tonight. Flying Fox, Bluebird, you're on civilian rescue. Do _not_ engage any of the freaky villains unless it's a matter of life and death; Blacklist rules still apply. Moneyspider, you stay here and try and find a way around the system hack—no complaining, you're fucking _fourteen_ and I'm not having that on my conscience. Spoiler, you're with me, we're going to check out the situation out at Blackgate."

"O, not that I'm questioning your judgement here, but I'm really more of an offensive fighter than—" Bluebird starts to say, but Pru cuts her off with a raised hand.

"I want you two to head to the Narrows and see how you can help out there—it's where the GCPD is least likely to have a presence, and it'll keep you from stressing over personal matters," Pru explains, leveling a look at Bluebird. Hopefully the girl will take the hint and just be grateful for the chance to check on her kid brother. "Alright, team. Time to head out. Good luck."

* * *

Even with all the dough Wayne's been pumping into them lately, the majority of the Narrows make up some of the few parts of Gotham City that the long arm of CCTV hasn't really reached yet. A few little bodegas _seem_ to have cameras stuck up on the outside of them, but Harper knows from experience that the guts of those cameras were pulled out long ago—if they were ever even there in the first place. Which is just as well, since she and Flying Fox didn't think to take along anywhere near enough of Oracle's spray stuff, and just a couple hours after they make their way to the neighborhood, Harper finds herself leading them through back alleys after some thug gets a lucky hit in on Flying Fox, cracking her helmet; it'd be very bad news if the Big Bads could track their current route.

Both she and Flying Fox have simple minor medical supplies stashed away in their respective pockets and pouches, but Harper doesn't like the way Flying Fox is weaving, the unsteadiness of her walk. Harper can't remember the signs that indicate concussion, wouldn't know what to do if it turns out to be just that. For now, she just wants to get them off the street and someplace safe so she can catch her breath, calm her heart, and get a good look at Flying Fox's head.

"Feels like... buildings're closer? Not claustrophobic... but this place—brr," Flying Fox slurs, shivering and hugging herself when they pause in a shadow, waiting for a car to pass. The slur is worrying, but Harper chooses to ignore the apparent paranoia—Flying Fox hasn't been all that comfortable since they passed out of the more polished parts of the city. If Harper were to hazard a guess, she'd suppose Flying Fox must hail from one of the nicer neighborhoods. Ugh. Oh well, at least FF's local, which is more than can be said for Oracle, who _clearly_ isn't from Gotham.

"Gotham's built on islands; space is at a premium," Harper says, tugging Flying Fox across the street. She glances up at the building they're standing beside, bites her lip. "Can you manage stairs? Just, probably not a good idea to go inside this one." The cameras inside Wayne's charity projects tend to be as close to tamper-proof as they can get, and neither she nor Lonnie have worked over the ones in this building, so there's a good chance they're all still operational.

Flying Fox makes a noise that could be interpreted as an affirmative, and Harper leads them around to the side of the building and the fire escape there. There's a ladder and five flights of stairs between them and their destination. Still, somehow, between a pretty chancy lift Harper rigs up using both their grapples and a whole lot of work on her part, they eventually get there.

Harper raps on the glass until the blackout curtain blocking her view ripples, and the window opens a crack. Her heart promptly leaps to her throat when the first thing through the opening is the business end of a taser. "I don't want any trouble," a shaky voice drifts out. "Also, I don't have anything worth taking, so, just. Go away, okay?"

She sighs in relief. Apparently, all her lectures on the importance of self-preservation are finally starting to sink in. "It's me," she hisses. "Open up."

The taser starts to withdraw, then stops. "Passcode?"

 _God_ , he is such a _weirdo_ , sometimes. "Up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A," she says flatly. This is what she gets for letting Cullen pick the passcode.

The taser disappears completely and the window opens the rest of the way. Between them, Harper and Cullen manage to haul Flying Fox into the apartment and over to the couch without causing _too_ much additional damage to the other vigilante. She hopes.

Once they have Flying Fox settled on the couch, Cullen turns right around and leaves, heading into Harper's bedroom—maybe he's being smart and putting back her taser before he hurts himself? Since Flying Fox looks safe enough for the moment on the couch, Harper herself quickly ducks into the bathroom to scrub the street off her hands and retrieve the box of first aid paraphernalia from where it's stashed under the sink.

In the bathroom, Harper gets as far as unbuckling her mask and dropping it next to the sink before she has to just. Stop. Grip the countertop tightly to keep herself steady. Take several deep breaths. Their world's been invaded by other-dimensional supervillains, she can't contact her team, her partner may very well have a concussion, and Harper has no idea how to deal with that when she can't access the internet, what with how the supervillains apparently also have a superhacker on their side.

The supervillains who have captured and unmasked Nightwing and may very well end up killing him before this is all over, fuck.

Harper lets herself panic for a moment or two longer, then forces it down and away. She can't afford the luxury of a breakdown right now, after all. She quickly washes up, grabs the medical box, and heads back into the living room.

The first thing she sees on returning is Cullen standing over Flying Fox, a scrap of blue cloth in his hand. When he holds it up, Harper recognizes the bandana she used back when she first started going out at night, before she had access to Oracle's sweet, sweet cash and connections. "For your face," Cullen tells Flying Fox. "That helmet looks like toast."

"'S okay," Flying Fox slurs, waving off the bandana when he tries to hand it over. "Y're gonna see anyway." Before either of them can stop her, she reaches up and thumbs the helmet's hidden latch. Apparently the latch was all that was keeping the thing together, since as soon as it releases, the helmet literally falls away from Flying Fox, pieces bouncing slightly when they hit the couch cushions. "Hey," she says, raising a hand and sketching a small, shaky wave. "I'm Tam."

"Fuck," Cullen hisses, automatically turning his face away so he can't see her, "don't do that! What about Rule Three?!"

A pretty Black woman about Harper's age blinks at him, then turns to Harper. "You taught your boyfriend the rules?"

"Little brother," Harper corrects her, coming back over. "This is our place; couldn't think of anywhere else to bring you. And I didn't tell him the rules, Moneyspider did." She tosses her gloves on the table, sets the box down next to them, then crouches down at Flying Fox's—Tam's—feet. "I'm Harper, by the way. He's Cullen."

"Moneyspider's name isn't Cullen," Tam says with a frown, sounding more than a little confused. She's swaying slightly, but her pupils are the same size and tracking, plus the slur vanished from her speech as soon as she took off the busted helmet. Harper makes a mental note to check the helmet's speaker setup before they leave.

"You know—? Of course you know Moneyspider's ID. You and Oracle are BFF or something," Harper mutters, digging through the box for gauze and rubbing alcohol.

"I'm Cullen," Cullen volunteers from where he's wandered off to the kitchen. God, Harper hopes he's getting them something to eat—saving the world is hungry work.

"He didn't mean to tell me," Tam admits, turning and tilting her head so Harper can get a better look at the damage there. "Moneyspider, I mean. I was poking around on Oracle's computer and he just thought I was her when he started messaging her. She doesn't use his handle when it's just the two of them."

The wound is a bloody mess, so Harper soaks a bunch of gauze in rubbing alcohol and sets to work cleaning off as much of it as she can. Tam winces and sways a little, but doesn't otherwise react. "Right," Harper says with a snort, thinking of the Blacklist posted back in the warehouse. "Because Oracle's arachnophobic."

Tam starts to shake her head, then immediately stops, letting out a small, involuntary hiss of pain. "She's not, she just had a bad experience with a bunch of spider-themed assassins. One of them slit her throat and left her for dead."

Harper jerks, dropping the gauze and staring at Tam. "What, _seriously_? And she's still _alive_?!"

"Red Robin saved her," Tam says, and, yeah, that would do a lot to help explain Oracle's apparent hard-on for Red Robin. "Or maybe not? I mean, the whole thing—It's. Complicated." Tam grimaces apologetically. "Complicated and not my story to tell."

"What's complicated?" Cullen asks, emerging from the kitchen. He sets a plate of sandwiches on the coffee table, making sure to grab one for himself before folding up on the couch next to Tam.

"Oracle's origin story. Apparently it involves evil Spider-Men," Harper says. Now that most of the blood is gone, she can see that the cut on Tam's forehead isn't anywhere near as bad as she originally thought; seems Flying Fox's helmet actually offers decent defense. Harper's pretty sure she can fix this with a couple of butterfly bandages once the dang thing stops bleeding.

"Wait, are we talking Venom or Carnage in terms of evil Spider-Men? Because that's two different levels of evil, there," Cullen says around a mouthful of sandwich, because not only is Harper's brother a total nerd sometimes, he also likes to pretend he was raised in a barn.

"Um, more like Black Widow before she became a good guy?" Tam says cautiously, angling her head to the side so Harper can start sticking on bandages.

Harper makes a disgusted sound. "Don't _encourage_ him," she tells Tam even as Cullen says,

"Sweet, spider assassins are wicked cool."

"Hey, I only know this stuff because Oracle insisted I had to suffer with her the last time she binge-read _Amazing Spider-Man_ back issues. Something about needing to educate herself so she could understand Red Robin's obscure references."

"Don't let Cullen fool you, he's a total poser," Harper says, smoothing antibacterial cream over the cut. It's looking good—slap some gauze on this puppy, fix Flying Fox's helmet, and they'll be good to go. "He's an anime nerd. Only started reading American comics after someone whose name rhymes with ‘Vin Drape' made a reference in an interview."

" _Lies_ ," Cullen hisses, eyes narrowing.

"Uh huh, you just keep telling yourself that, dork." Harper snags a sandwich with one hand and catches up the pieces of Flying Fox's helmet with the other. "Pretty sure you don't have a serious concussion," she tells Tam, "so go ahead and eat something. I'ma gonna check this out and see if I can't fix it. We've still got a job to do."

"Yeah," Tam says, glancing at the TV across the room. The message that appeared on all the monitors at the warehouse is here, too, vicious and red. The atmosphere of the room changes subtly, jocularity giving way to seriousness. A worried line crinkles Tam's forehead as she reaches for a sandwich, eyes still on the TV screen. "I know."

* * *

After everything is over (after the moon is back where it belongs, after the computers have returned to normal, after Dick's life has been snuffed out), Tam is silent for most of the drive back to Metropolis. Thinking. There's a lot for her to cogitate on, after all, and for the past few days she hasn't really been capable of focussing beyond the immediate _now_. Hadn't seen Connie at all until just a couple of hours ago, when Tam and Harper finally had enough breathing space to make it back to the warehouse and check in.

It takes a while, but eventually Tam feels she's reached a point where she's ready to talk. "Dick was Nightwing." She still hasn't entirely processed that information, but she's been mulling it over in between everything else. "According to your Bat chart, Nightwing was the first Robin. Was Jason Todd the second one? The one who died." Tam barely knew Jason, was just introduced to him at a party one time, back when Bruce Wayne first took him in. By all accounts, she should have connected with Jason a lot better than she ever had with Dick—Jason had only been a few months older than her, even shared a couple classes with her over at Gotham Academy. But Jason had kept himself apart from everyone else. Aloof, it'd seemed. She'd figured she'd try harder later, and then there'd never been a later.

The car jerks suddenly, Connie swearing and yanking at the steering wheel to keep them in their lane. "What. Makes you say that?"

"Timing is right. That would make Red Robin Tim Drake." The Wayne kid who's pretty much dropped off the grid except for appearances at the occasional Wayne-related function. Tam herself hasn't seen him since the gala she dragged Connie to last December.

Oh. The gala.

"Where are you even—"

"No wonder you were ready to kill me at that stupid gala last year—were you ever going to tell me I'd left you alone with _Robin_?" Tam's brain is working faster now, making connections, finding correlations. Tiffany may be the genius of the Fox siblings, but Tam is still pretty damned smart herself. "Oh god, Batman doesn't work for Wayne, does he?"

"Well, technically Batman, Inc. just gets its funding from—"

"Wayne _is_ Batman."

Connie jerks the wheel hard to the right, barely missing being sideswiped by a SUV as she pulls off onto the shoulder. The car screeches to a halt and Connie fixes Tam with a _look_. "Don't _ever_ say that again."

"What? That Bruce Wayne is—" Tam breaks off, effectively silenced when Connie claps a hand over her mouth hard enough it leaves Tam's lips stinging.

"Batman's identity is one of the biggest secrets in Gotham. One of the most important—if the wrong person ever makes that connection, it could jeopardize thousands of lives, not to mention Batman's entire operation," Connie snaps. Her eyes are cold and hard, glittering strangely in the lights from passing cars. To Tam, she's never been scarier. "Do you understand."

Gulping, Tam slowly nods her head. Connie lowers her hand, and Tam works her jaw. Her lips still sting from where Connie's palm connected. "It's true, then?"

"I cannot confirm the Batman's identity," Connie says, which means _yes_.

Tam thinks about that as Connie pulls back out onto the road. Thinks about everything, about what it means if Wayne is Batman. Is still slogging forward after losing three out of four of his kids (and it suddenly hits Tam hard, the realization that Damian Wayne isn't at school somewhere in Europe like everyone thinks, is actually _dead_ ). It's a lot to process, a lot to take in, and she isn't entirely sure what she can say to relieve the tension (grief) clogging up the car.

Finally, Tam settles on, "I can't believe Red Robin is such a little snot."

" _Ugh_ ," Connie grunts, her hands tightening on the wheel as she glares into the night. "Don't even get me started on that idiot."

* * *

Oracle's always telling them to keep their heads down because it's better to stay an urban legend in a city with the likes of the Joker and Scarecrow running around, but Stephanie knows for a fact that Bluebird patrols her own neighborhood and has saved Batman's life at least once, Flying Fox got to go to Texas on some sort of super-secret mission last month, and even Moneyspider has some kind of hacker-Robin Hood past. From what they've all overheard during training sessions, it's clear that Oracle herself is in regular contact with shady people like the Red Hood (who apparently isn't so shady if the Bat chart in the warehouse can be believed) and the Trickster and Catwoman (who are _definitely_ shady). Basically, when Oracle says to keep a low profile, what she really means is for _Stephanie_ to stay out of the limelight. Because apparently having a D-list villain for a dad puts you at greater risk than trolling both Red Robin and Red Hood? Stephanie doesn't pretend to understand it, she just knows the whole thing stinks.

Either way, Stephanie's pretty sure she's found a way around the issue. If Oracle's big problem is the possibility that Steph's dad is going to clue into the fact that his daughter's running around at night vigilante-ing it up, the obvious solution is for Stephanie to simply patrol as far away from her dad as possible, right? Right.

The next meeting of Oracle's little group isn't scheduled to happen for at least a week, so Stephanie reasons she's really just keeping up Oracle's recommended training regime when she jumps onto the roof of a train car headed into the city. Stephanie can't train surf the way she saw Nightwing ( _Richard Grayson_ , fuck—she still can't believe it) do once, but she's got some pretty sweet toys courtesy of Bluebird, including a couple of magnetic hooks that make the ride practically a walk in the park. As long as she keeps her mask up and the bugs out, at least.

Everything is speeding by so quickly that Stephanie doesn't notice anything's off until the train is about to start across the bridge and into Gotham-proper. It's easy to miss until she has the city laid out before her, lights twinkling into existence as dusk descends. Something of Oracle's paranoia must be sticking, though, because Stephanie acts on instinct, shooting off her grapple at a nearby interstate sign and releasing the magnets before she's even certain the grapple has a solid lock. (It does, Stephanie doesn't end up train pizza, but she really shouldn't have done that.)

Jumping off the train just because of a vaguely unsettled feeling seems like a coward's move, but glancing back at the spectacle across the bay, Stephanie feels like her actions are justified. Smart, not cowardly.

Gulping, Stephanie pulls the comm from a belt pouch and fits it in her ear, thumbing it on at the same time. "Oracle?"

 _"Spoiler."_ Oracle doesn't sound mad about the unexpected interruption of her night, but then Oracle never sounds like much of _anything_ , especially over comms.

"Um. Not to be a worrywart or anything, but I'm at the land side of New Trigate Bridge, and, um. The city is pastel." There, she's said it.

_"What."_

"I was gonna patrol the city, because it is way unfair that Bluebird and Flying Fox get to have all the fun and I have to wait for a literal invasion, only there's a kind of pastel haze over Gotham," Stephanie explains in a rush. She's pretty sure Oracle isn't based in the city; thinks their esteemed leader is somewhere outside it in the suburbs or one of the unincorporated townships in neighboring Kane County. If Oracle _is_ in the city, though... Well. She's probably under the influence of whatever's making everything weird and pastel, which can't be good—Gotham and pastel do _not_ mix. Way too kitschy for a classy film noir femme fatale like Gotham.

 _"There are good reasons why you shouldn't patrol on your own,"_ Oracle snaps. _"Among them the fact that you're a minor. But since you're there, tell me about this ‘pastel'."_

Stephanie being a minor is a ridiculous excuse and they both know it—Red Robin and his merry band of meta teens are pretty much _all_ minors and no one tells _them_ they have to have adults holding their hands every time they suit up to save the world. Ugh. So not fair. "I think it might be some kind of gas. It's mostly staying concentrated over the city, but it's getting blown across the water some now that the wind's shifted. Heavy concentration—my mask keeps most stuff out, but I'm starting to feel a little light-headed. Um. Giddy, I guess?"

There's silence on the other end of the line, and Stephanie shifts uneasily. She isn't like Bluebird and Moneyspider—she doesn't know anyone in their little group outside the mask. If there's something going down in the city, Stephanie has no chance of finding any of the others to help her out. Though. If everyone on the islands is under the influence of the pastel, it could very well be that Stephanie's better off tackling this on her own.

 _"Alright,"_ Oracle says at last. _"It looks like someone's using dirigibles or something to spread happy gas all over the city."_

"Great, okay," Stephanie says, winding her grapple and readying it. "How do I stop it?"

_"You don't."_

Stephanie growls in frustration. "I get that you have a weird thing against underage kids saving the day, but, newsflash—twenty-to-one all of Gotham's other heroes are in range of the freaky Pastel and out of commission."

 _"There are other heroes in other cities. Red Robin, for example. Flying Fox and I are also currently outside the city limits,"_ Oracle says, because she is a total buzzkill. _"Not that we'll be doing anything."_

"Huh? Why not?" Though Stephanie can hazard a guess—too big, too flashy, too much chance of attracting attention of the Bat variety. Oracle is all about playing it safe and flying as far under Batman's radar as possible.

_"Broadcasts coming out of the city show a complete restructuring of the city's hierarchy. Because of the happy gas, I guess."_

"So?"

_"So, everyone in that city currently thinks Roman Sionis is the police commissioner."_

Try as she might, the name means nothing to Stephanie. "Okay?"

Oracle sighs, grating and electronic. _"Roman Sionis is Black Mask. Black Mask—"_

"—is on the Blacklist. Yeah, yeah, I know. But this is a big deal! All of Gotham is high on Pastel and most-probably brainwashed! We have to—"

 _"Stephanie,"_ Oracle snaps, breaking through the babble. Steph gulps. If there's one thing Oracle is particularly anal about, it's that she _never_ calls any of them by their actual names when they're in costume. _"If the GCPD is under Black Mask's control, you aren't going anywhere near the city."_

"But—"

_"You have ten seconds to turn around and start home before I activate your nanites and they start zapping you."_

"You said those were just for tracking!" Stephanie squeaks. "And that we didn't have any!" Not that she doubts Oracle's sincerity—Stephanie's already shooting her grapple at an eastbound train, getting ready to head back the way she came.

_"I say a lot of things. Six one-thousand, seven one-thousand—"_

"Ugh," Stephanie grunts, partly because colliding with the top of a moving train is never fun, but mostly out of disgust. "Flying Fox is right. Sometimes you're a _total_ creeper."

* * *

_Found on a whiteboard in a Gotham warehouse owned by the Noh-Jay Consortium._  


* * *

"What _are_ you looking at?"

Lonnie nearly falls out of his seat, he's so startled by the unexpected question. Pretty much no one aside from him ever comes by the HQ outside of training sessions, after all. At least, he didn't think so. "Uh," he says, twisting around to look up at Oracle while he tries to calm his racing heart. Struggles to come up with an explanation that won't just dig him deeper. "Well." _Technically_ he isn't breaking any rules. Technically. "There's some new stuff in the Batman, Inc. database on Spyral, so I—"

Oracle's hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes. Hard. "Lonnie. What does it say at the top of the Blacklist?" She doesn't exactly _hiss_ when she asks the question, but Lonnie's fairly certain that's more because the voice scrambler in her mask simply isn't up to the task. The hiss is still definitely _implied_.

"That we don't aid, engage, or draw the attention of anyone on the list," he answers glumly. "But—"

"And who is at the bottom of that list?"

Ha, she thinks she's caught him, but he's totally got this one. "Batwing."

"What? No, he's not."

"Someone added him," Lonnie tells her, pleased to at least be one step ahead of her on this.

"Ugh, I'll deal with that later. The _correct_ final entry is 'anyone with any kind of spider name'." She puts special emphasis on the word "spider"—a not-at-all subtle reminder that she still wants him to change his heroing handle.

Just like every other time the topic's come up, Lonnie chooses to ignore the reminder. " _Technically_ Spyral just has a spider logo. And possibly some spider-related doctrine, according to this new intel. No spider name."

"I figured Spyral's inclusion on the list was implied when they first came to our attention," Oracle says, releasing his shoulder and reaching over it for the keyboard, dire intentions clear in the way she moves.

"Wait!" He surges forward, grabbing her wrist before she can destroy _hours_ of work. "Don't you want to at least know what I've found, first? I swear it's good."

Her hand pauses an inch from the power button. Hovers. Finally shakes off his loose grip and withdraws. "Fine. But if you've done anything that could possibly jeopardize our operation..."

"I haven't, honest! It's good stuff, really." Lonnie spins his chair back around, fingers flying across the keys, bringing up photos, chatlogs, the works.

"Okay, so. Check it out. One of the things Wingman included in his original Spyral report was a photo of a bunch of girls dressed in these yellow uniforms, right? Well, it turns out that particular uniform's been encountered by one of Batman's people before. Batman, Inc. had someone—Batgirl, I think—embedded in this English boarding school, and she totally reported the girls there wearing the same get-up!"

"St. Hadrian's," Oracle says softly, going completely still beside him. "I've heard of it."

Lonnie shivers, but really, he's not the least bit surprised. Considering what he's learned about St. Hadrian's Finishing School for Girls, he wouldn't put it past their fearless leader being an alumna. "Right, okay. So I'm checking out St. H's, yeah? Testing their firewalls—carefully! Really carefully, I swear! Anyway, I'm checking them out and what do I find but this super-encrypted connection; so fierce even I couldn't crack it. But what I _could_ do was piggyback on that signal and sneak into the school's intranet. I've been IMing one of the students, and she's been getting me pix of the adults hanging around the campus in exchange for some of my simpler premade code-crackers."

"You have photos of the school staff. Some or all of whom are probably Spyral agents. Provided by one of their own protegés."

With a grin, Lonnie brings the spread of all of the photos to forefront on the screen. "Yeah, well. She said she was already taking the photos, and the admin-types are way too uptight anyway. Plus, uh." He swallows, isn't entirely able to keep the blush off his cheeks. "She's a fan."

"A fan."

"Yeah, of Moneyspider! Like, I know all you girls are newish to the secret ID game, but you gotta recognize that the Moneyspider's been around for years, now. I get legit respect in the right circles, O." Lonnie just wishes more of those circles included hot babes like Lotti Duff.

"Spyral still may've traced your communications," Oracle says, sounding slightly distracted. All her attention appears to be focused to the photos on the screen. There are a lot of them, multiple pix from multiple angles; too bad there aren't many good face shots. "No matter how encrypted the signal you're riding on is."

"Doubt it," Lonnie says, voice full of smug satisfaction. "It's been broadcasting intermittently for months now, and Spyral hasn't caught on yet." Crosses his fingers fingers behind his back, hopes she doesn't ask about the the signal's origin. Lonnie's positive he's been sneaky enough to avoid drawing attention from that quarter, but still. He took the time to trace all its twisty turns to the source back at the start of all this, and while he has no compunctions about using it, Oracle made it clear early on in their association that she is _not_ a fan of having the Batman looking into her business.

"Bloody hell," Oracle whispers, leaning forward and staring at the screen with a scary level of intensity. She's silent for a few beats, then reaches out to tap one of the photos on the screen. "See if your contact if can get you video of this one in action."

"W-what? Oh! Okay, sure." He glances at her. "What's so important about him? Do you think he might be the boss or something?"

She tilts her head back, still focused exclusively on the screen. "Or something."

* * *

_"Not to be pushy or anything, but you wouldn't happen to have Batwing's contact frequency, would you?"_

"Excuse me?" Tim doesn't know what to make of the request—it's out of nowhere as far as he knows. Not to mention that Oracle's gone out of her way in the past to avoid other Bats as much as possible. That she's trying to get in touch with one now seems. Problematic.

_"Contact number or frequency for Batwing. C'mon, I haven't got all day—I'm on a time crunch. Have you got it or not?"_

"I've got it, it's just. Why do you want to talk to Batwing?" Tim's out of the loop with Batman, Inc. (what's left of it, at least, after the craziness with Leviathan), but he seems to remember a memo coming through a month or two back about the Batwing mantle being passed on from one operative to another. The new Batwing can't have been around long enough to have popped up on Oracle's radar, can he've?

There's a grating noise from Oracle that Tim's chosen to interpret as a sound of disgust in the past. _"I have some information relevant to a case my sources say Batwing's currently working. Normally, I'd hand it off to Red Hood and he'd eventually pass it on for me, but the whole fiasco's on a bit of a deadline, so that really won't work this time."_

Tim's fingers fly across his keyboard as he connects to the Batman, Inc. network and opens the file on Batwing's current assignment. (Tries not to think about the fact that Oracle apparently talks to Jason as well as him and what that might mean.) Missing persons, shit. Even worse, it's two of Lucius Fox's kids, which could potentially compromise Batman's entire operation, just about, if whoever has them decides to use them as leverage against Fox and what he knows about Batman.

Then Tim's eye catches on the information at the top of the screen and oh. _Oh._ It's information that's not available to most of Batman's operatives, but Tim isn't like most operatives. Between him and Barbara, they wrote a good chunk of the code that makes up the Batcomputer and its subsidiaries. There's very little in the system that he can't get into, and he gave himself access to operative identities ages ago.

It would seem that the new Batwing is none other than Lucius's oldest child, Lucas "Luke" Fox.

"You have intel on the Fox sisters?" Tim asks, calling up a new window and hunting down the contact info Oracle originally requested.

 _"Not much, but I do have a last known location for Tamara Fox,"_ Oracle says. It's hard to tell with the filter that masks her voice, but it sounds like she says the words in a rush. Like she might be scared or anxious, which may actually be a first. _"Evidence suggests that both she and Tiffany have been taken underground."_

"Any little bit could help, at this point. You want to give me the details? I'll pass it on for you—Batwing's still new to the game and you can be sure Batman has him on a pretty short leash. There's a good chance he's monitoring Batwing's communications, and I know how you like to keep a low profile," Tim offers. He remembers the song-and-dance that happened with the Joker, the mysterious Batgirl that helped the Titans find Tim and the others; remembers what Kon said about someone guiding that other Batgirl all night, whispering advice in her ear. Most of all, Tim remembers how both the other Batgirl and the girl helping Red Hood's friends disappeared right before anyone made contact with Batman and the rest of his (ha) family.

 _"That would be. Very helpful,"_ Oracle says. _"Thanks, Red. I really appreciate it."_

* * *

> ` Bluebird: What's the plan?`
> 
> `Oracle: Hello to you too.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Yeah, hi, whatever. What's the rescue plan?`
> 
> `Bluebird: She's been captured, right? She's not on a mission or something?`
> 
> `Oracle: What?`
> 
> `Bluebird: FF, duh.`
> 
> `Oracle: Why would Flying Fox need rescuing?`
> 
> `Bluebird: Uh, her photo being flashed on the evening news and the missing person fliers all around town make it pretty obvious SOMETHING'S going on, duh.`
> 
> `Oracle: You know who Flying Fox is?`
> 
> `Bluebird: Her helmet broke during the whole Crime Syndicate thing. It came up.`
> 
> `Bluebird: In case it wasn't clear: I'm volunteering for the rescue team when you send it out.`
> 
> `Oracle: Yeah, no.`
> 
> `Oracle: Rescue team's not happening.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Fuck keeping a low profile, this is one of ours! If you don't do anything, I'll get her back myself.`
> 
> `Oracle: No, that's not`
> 
> `Oracle: One of Batman's people is taking care of it.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Why is Batman saving one of *our* people??`
> 
> `Oracle: FF's dad IS sort-of a big shot at WE and Batman DOES get funding from Wayne.`
> 
> `Oracle: And it's not Batman, anyway.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Why the fuck not?! Anyone who could take down FF is seriously powered.`
> 
> `Oracle: A) It's not FF who's missing, it's her civilian ID.`
> 
> `Oracle: B) Glad you think my training is so stellar, but all of you are still beginners compared to, like, one of the Robins. Taking down FF? Not so impressive.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Well, either way the Bat better put one of his best people on the job.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Who is it? Red Robin? Batgirl?`
> 
> `Oracle: Actually, that's something I wanted to talk to you about.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Oh fuck no. Not that douche.`
> 
> `Oracle: Why DID you add Batwing to the Blacklist?`
> 
> `Oracle: (FYI--Don't do that again. The people on that list are all VERY dangerous. You can't add someone as a joke.)`
> 
> `Bluebird: Batwing stole Flying Fox's name when Scarecrow had the city hallucinating happy-pastel-utopia Gotham! Totally not cool.`
> 
> `Oracle: ...wait, for real? He actually called himself that? Bloody hell, that is so messed up.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Batgirl was calling herself Bluebelle and Catwoman had, like, some weird Cat/Robin hybrid identity. *Everything* about that week was messed up.`
> 
> `Oracle: Wow.`
> 
> `Oracle: Either way, original point still stands: Don't add to the Blacklist.`
> 
> `Bluebird: SIGH. Alright.`
> 
> `Bluebird: ...so.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Batwing is gonna bring FF back?`
> 
> `Oracle: That's the plan. I gave him a nudge in the right direction, so hopefully...`
> 
> `Bluebird: Just checking — if he fucks it up, we get to rescue both of them, y/y?`
> 
> `Oracle: Y.`
> 
> `Oracle: To be fair, he has a high chance of success. Personally invested in the mission, etc.`
> 
> `Bluebird: Right, because of the Batman-Wayne-WE-Fox connection.`
> 
> `Oracle: Something like that.`

  


* * *

When Tam went to Gotham, it was to provide emotional support to her parents, both of them freaking out over her missing sister and AWOL brother. _Not_ to try and save the day, despite what Connie accused her of back in Metropolis. (Of course, Connie also locked up the Flying Fox suit and gear, so it's not like Tam could have done much even if she'd wanted to.) It never occurred to Tam that just coming to Gotham could be equated with putting herself in danger. Oops.

So now Tam is tied up in an ancient nightmare-dentist chair while some big, hulking dude rants on about how unfair his life has been and how now the world owes him. Tam is nodding along, making the occasional noise of agreement, asking encouraging questions when he pauses for breath. She's incredibly grateful for the talk Connie-as-Oracle gave at the warehouse a while back on how to survive unhinged psychopaths. (Apparently most of Connie's advice on the subject came from dealing with an ex-boss of hers and any number of former coworkers. And possibly Connie's time spent babysitting Damian Wayne? Tam doesn't pretend to understand where Connie's particular skillset comes from.)

"I can't say I've gone through anything like what you have," Tam says, choosing her words carefully. "But I know about friends not being all they're cracked up to be. Like, my best friend, right? I thought I totally knew her and then I found out she's someone completely different. The person I thought she was is just an act."

"That's just _girls_ ," Menace sneers. "You're all two-faced like that."

"Yeah, okay," Tam says, because in light of her current situation she's not about to touch the sexism in _that_ statement with a ten-foot pole, "but. It doesn't mean we like it anymore than you guys do. And, okay. My family? They just don't get me. I can't talk to my parents about my interests because they have this picture of me in their heads and they refuse to see anything that doesn't fit it. They figure I have to be the artsy one because Tiffany's the genius, and, let's face it, Luke is pretty much the family jock."

Menace lets out an angry roar, slamming his fist into the wall just inches from Tam's head and pretty much confirming what Tam noticed earlier—Menace really, really hates it whenever she mentions her brother. Probably this whole kidnapping thing is because Menace has some sort of beef with Luke, _not_ because of Tam's extracurricular activities as Flying Fox. Which, hey. Good news? Yay? But so not helpful right now.

"He has to pay for what he did!"

"Great, excellent," Tam says quickly, not so much because she honestly thinks Luke deserves whatever retribution this dude intends for him, but more because Luke _isn't_ here and she'd much rather Menace's ridiculous anger management issues were aimed at someone or something that's not her or Tiffany.

"He has to suffer the same way I've suffered!" Menace shouts, bits of plaster shaking loose from ceiling in the wake of his stentorian tones.

"Right. So. I guess you're going to pump him full of nasty chemicals and if he survives you two can, what? Duke it out?" Tam tries to sound encouraging, but right now she's mostly talking to cover the sounds of her fumbling as her hands work behind her back to free the knife secured to the underside of her belt. God, Connie _so_ isn't going to let her hear the end of it if Tam can't manage to get herself free.

Menace laughs, a dark and, well, _menacing_ chuckle. "Oh, no. I'm going to do that to _you_."

Tam nearly drops her knife in surprise. "Wait. Hold up. In what world does _that_ make sense? I met you for the first time yesterday, and we've already established that you've got no beef with me aside from my idiot brother—I'm an innocent in this." Not _strictly_ true—Tam _did_ come back to Gotham with the intention of saving Tiffany from this freak (yeah, okay, Connie was a little right there), he just grabbed her before she got any further than checking in with her parents.

"No one's an innocent. Not in Gotham."

Well. He's certainly right there, as depressing as it is. "I dunno," Tam drawls, trying to mask her elation when, at last, the blade of her knife finally cuts through the last strand of the ropes binding her wrists together. She quickly catches the newly-cut ends up in her hands to keep Menace from noticing. "There was this guy I knew who I could have sworn _was_ , but he turned out to be running around in the super spankies at night, so. Goes to show what I know." Dick's death still hurts, even if Connie keeps insisting that, as a former Robin, Nightwing has absolutely zero chance of staying down for good.

"Vigilantes! They're part of the problem, part of what's wrong with this city. Bullies, shoving people around just because they can hide behind masks and pretend they don't have to follow the rules! Making everything worse for the rest of us!"

Tam tactfully doesn't point out the irony of Menace's words. "Okay, but. You realize the whole Leviathan thing wasn't Batman's fault, right? That was pretty much because Talia al Ghul has daddy issues and wasn't told 'no' enough as a kid. And, like. Her being the stalker ex-girlfriend from hell." When Menace shoots her a disbelieving look, Tam shrugs. "What? I live with a communications major. Just because they can't print it doesn't mean journalists don't know what's what." Seriously, there are things about Connie's past life as a fucking _ninja assassin_ that Tam could really do without knowing. Like the details of Bruce Wayne's love life. "Either way, that still doesn't make it cool to fridge me for character development."

"...excuse me?"

"Sorry. My roomie's also a comic nerd. Basically, you're hurting me because I'm a woman of a certain age and my brother currently doesn't have a girlfriend. You hope to cause him a whole bunch of emotional pain and trauma by hurting me, and in that way put him off his game. But, because good always triumphs over evil, etc., ultimately it will just lead to further character development on the part of some masked hero," Tam patiently explains. "Like, okay. Yeah, it's not fair? But getting your revenge this way just makes you come across as a misogynistic prick and will win you literally zero sympathy votes from the audience."

Menace howls and slams his fist into the wall, inches away from Tam's face. Apparently, he's not a fan of meta. "There _is_ no audience! This is just between me and Luke Fox!"

"And me and Tiffany," Tam reminds him. "Seeing as how we're actual people and not just extensions of Luke. Look, you can't say it's just you and Luke if you're going out of your way to involve other parties. The only way you could _remotely_ justify abducting and torturing us would be if Luke went and did the same to your relatives. Which, okay, doesn't seem likely—totally out of character for him."

"I haven't hurt Tiffany," Menace grumbles, turning away and kicking at a wall. "She's just bait."

"Well, that's totally ageist. You want to turn my brain to mush but you aren't going to do anything to Tiff because... what? She's under eighteen? Don't even get me started on how sexist it is that you've only grabbed females and totally left my dad alone."

"Maybe I'm gonna hurt you because you're a bitch who can't keep her fucking mouth shut!" Menace yells, stomping out of the room and slamming the door behind himself. No doubt he's on his way to fetch his brain-melting drugs, which, well. Not ideal? But at least he's gone, which is basically what she was aiming for.

With a sigh, Tam drops the loose restraints she's been holding, cuts her feet free, and moves to the door, trying the knob. Excellent—unlocked, that will make this a hell of a lot faster.

Tam gives Menace half a minute to get clear of the immediate vicinity of the door, then slips out of the room and into a dilapidated hall. Menace isn't in evidence, so Tam starts trying knobs until she finds one that's locked. Heart in her throat, Tam raps softly on the door. "Tiff? You in there, brainiac?"

"...Tam? Why're you here?"

"Looking for you, squirt. I'll have you out of here in a jiffy—sit tight, okay?" Tam says. She slips her picks out of the hollow heel of her shoe and sets to work. Connie's drilled all of them on basic escape techniques, but Tam's never been a natural at this the way Lonnie and Spoiler are. Thankfully, the lock is just as worn out as the rest of this place, and before long Tam has an armful of little sister.

"Do you know how to get home?" Tiffany wants to know once she's finally let Tam go.

"Nope, sorry. I was kind of barely conscious when he grabbed me. But anywhere has to be better than here, right? C'mon, get on my back. My legs are longer than yours, we'll go faster if I carry you."

"I found a knife in that room. It's in my sock," Tiffany tells her as she clambers onto Tam's back.

"Good girl. I've got one up my sleeve." Tam's grateful Tiffany is cooperating with her instead of being difficult the way she usually is when Tam tells her what to do. Of course, Tiffany's still seven years old, genius or not. She's probably terrified out of her wits.

"The monster man said he's mad because Luke blew him up," Tiffany says as they hurry down the hall. Tam's headed for the door at the very end—it looks the most likely to lead outside.

"I think he's someone Luke used to know. Got mixed up in some weird stuff when the city went crazy back during Zero Year," Tam says, glancing all around as she goes. "Luke might have been some kind of player in this guy's origin story," because Luke _had_ been a little off the rails back then, from what Tam can recall, "but I doubt Luke blew him up intentionally."

Connie would probably insist that the fact that Luke has a D-list costumed rogue for a nemesis means that Luke is likely to don the super spandex himself. Tam would worry about that (one cape per family is really more than enough—look at the mess that's the Wayne family after the deaths of Jason, Dick, _and_ Damian, Jesus), but then a door bursts open and out comes that creep, Ratcatcher.

"Hey! Stop!"

Tam acts on instinct, pivoting on one foot while palming the scalpel from Tiffany's sock at the same time. She lets the knife fly, doesn't stick around to see if it connects. She's pretty sure she saw a flash of outside through the doorway Ratcatcher just came through, so she barrels past him and out the door.

The light is all wrong for outside, but there are crowds of people here, and crowds mean a chance to get lost and become another nameless face. Tam heads straight into the churning mass, dodging bodies and leaping over boxes. She wishes she had her grappling gun, but for now she'll just have to make do with agility and muscle memory. "We must be somewhere underground," Tam pants, more to herself than to Tiffany; processing information as it comes to her. "There's nowhere else a space like this could exist in the city." Not to mention that Tam's comm stopped working pretty soon after she was grabbed; Connie still hasn't gotten Moneyspider or Bluebird to fix the relay issue. Which means that Connie can't even access the tracker nanites that Tam _knows_ must be in her and the others, no matter what Connie claims to the contrary.

"How'd you do that? With the knife?" Tiffany wants to know as Tam scans their surroundings, trying to find a staircase or some other way to move upwards. She can hear the scrabbling of hundreds of tiny feet behind them, Ratcatcher's shouts almost lost in the din.

There, down that alley.

"Self-defense classes," Tam says, jumping over a cart and sprinting down the alleyway, towards the ladder at the end of it. This better work—if she's wrong, she's leading them into a dead end. Not even Connie's ninja-assassin training will help them against Ratcatcher and all of his rats.

"Up here!" someone shouts from somewhere above the ladder, and for a moment Tam thinks she sees Bluebird at the top. Then her eyes adjust to the bright glow radiating out of the dim and she realizes it's a complete stranger dressed in bat-themed armor.

"Batman?" Tam chances, hopes. Wayne owes it to her father, her family, to come for them. And his gadgets are way better than most of the ones Tam and her friends have access to, according to Connie.

"Batwing," the man corrects her. "I'm a friend of Batman's. You can trust me, Miss Fox."

"Yes, right, of course. Sorry, should have recognized you," Tam says. "Tiffany, you go with Batwing, okay?"

"No! Stranger danger!"

"Tiff, the Bats are safe. They work for Mr. Wayne, just like Daddy."

"No!" Tiffany insists, because of course _now_ she decides to revert back to norm and not listen to anything Tam says. "I'm staying with you!"

Of course, it's a moot point in the end, since that's when Ratcatcher and his rats catch up with them.

"Get down, both of you!" Batwing shouts and, well. Tam isn't exactly sure what happens next. She reacts automatically, doing as she's told and dropping to her knees so she can wrap her body around Tiffany, shield her from harm and, hopefully, any awareness of whatever mess is going on around them.

When the noise ends and Tam chances looking up again, Ratcatcher and the rats are all down for the count.

"Are they dead?" Tiffany whispers, peering over Tam's shoulder.

"Can't be sure about the rats, but Ratcatcher is alive," Batwing assures her as he helps them to their feet.

"Good," Tam says shakily. "Can't break Rule One."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. How do we get out of here, Mr. Hero?" Tam turns on the charm and tries to herd Tiffany towards Batwing and the ladder.

Tiffany who apparently still hasn't gotten over her earlier reserves. "Tam, we don't _know_ him! Anyone can dress up like Batman," she insists, like Tam hasn't thought of that. (She has—but this armor is a perfect match to that of the Batwing in the BI footage she's watched with Lonnie, so she's going to take a chance and trust that this guy's who he claims to be.)

"Miss Fox, we need to go _now_ ," Batwing pleads. Tam isn't sure if he's addressing her or Tiffany, but she chooses to believe it's her.

"If she doesn't want to budge, nothing's going to make her—certainly not _me_. Tiffany _bites_."

Batwing sighs in frustration, then reaches up and presses something on the side of his neck. "Trust me," he says as the front of his helmet releases, lifts up, "I know." There, partially shadowed by Batwing's face mask, is her brother Luke.

Tam smacks him as hard as she can across the mouth.

"Ow! What's that for?!"

"For not taking better care of your rogues. I nearly got fridged for the sake of your stupid character arc," Tam snaps, grabbing a speechless Tiffany and passing her up to Luke. Luckily, this time Tiffany acts on reflex and automatically reaches for their older brother in spite of her stunned state.

"...Luke?"

"Hey, Tiff. Sorry about all of this. You can hit me, too, if you want," he says, looking at least a little ashamed.

"I want Mommy," Tiffany says in a small voice as Tam scrambles up the ladder after them. "Do she and Daddy know you're Batwing?"

"No," Tam says, pulling herself to her feet and taking Tiffany from Luke so she can resettle her on her back. With his hands free, Luke presses the hidden switch again, and his mask closes up tight once more. "If they did, they'd be really mad. So you can't tell them, Tiff. This is a big secret—you can't tell anyone, ever. Okay?"

"Why?"

Something tells Tam that Tiffany won't take, 'Because Rule Three,' for an answer. Thankfully, Luke seems to have recovered his voice. "Because bad people will want to hurt you if they know who I am, Tiffany."

"The monster man already tried to hurt us," Tiffany says, sullen and clearly starting to feel cranky and in need of a nap.

"Menace is mad at Luke, though. Not Batwing," Tam explains. "Batwing has a lot more enemies."

"I guess," Tiffany says drowsily, leaning her head on Tam's shoulder as Tam trudges along beside Luke.

Some time later, after Tiffany's drifted off and they've gained sixty or seventy feet in altitude, Luke turns to Tam, catching her eye. The front of his helmet may be back in place, but Tam has plenty of practice dealing with people in masks. "What?" she snaps.

"Thanks," he says. "For being so cool about this."

Tam huffs. "You're an adult. If this is what you want to do with your life, you're old enough to make that decision for yourself." Plus, Tam's hardly in any place to judge Luke for wanting to be a vigilante.

"Wish Dad could remember that," Luke says gloomily, giving Tam a hand up over a broken wall.

"It's," Tam starts to say. Stops. Thinks a moment, trying to sort out all the thoughts crowding up and swirling around in her head. "I keep coming back to Dick," she says finally.

Luke cocks his head to the side, curious. "Dick?"

"Dick Grayson," Tam says, though they both only know (knew) just the one person with that name. "He was Nightwing, and it got him killed."

"Tam, I'm not—"

"You can't say for sure this won't get you killed," Tam interrupts. "But that's not what I meant. Dick, he saw how the world was broken, and instead of just throwing his hands up and hoping someone else would fix it, he took what he was good at and used that to fight back." It's like Connie is always saying—everyone is relevant, but if you don't do something to make yourself stand out, you run the risk of being mistaken for something inconsequential and disposable. "You could just duck your head and take that R&D job at WE that Dad keeps pushing at you, but you don't. That's what Dad doesn't get—the world's a different place than it was before Zero Year. It's not always enough to fight from behind a desk anymore."

"You've thought about this a lot, huh?" Luke's chin tilts back, and Tam doesn't need to see his face to know what it must look like right now. You know someone your entire life and you learn all their quirks, including how they hold themselves when they're impressed. A year ago, it would've meant the world to Tam to elicit this kind of reaction from her much-cooler big brother. Now, though... Well.

A lot has happened in the past year. None of the Fox siblings are who they used to be, Tam most of all.

"I figured someone in our family had to," Tam says. She shrugs the shoulder Tiffany's not passed out on. "I mean, considering."

"Considering?"

"Well, Dad working for Wayne and Batman, Inc., and all that." Tam doesn't mention that Bruce Wayne and all his kids are running around in masks at night. If Luke hasn't figured it out on his own, that's his fault. "We were a part of this before you ever put on that armor."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Luke shoots off a grapple, watches as it sails into darkness above them, then gives it an experimental tug before fixing the end of the line to his armor. He turns and holds out a hand.

Tam glances up. Stares into the unknown for a minute, thinking. If Connie and her theory of multiversal redundancy are to be believed, Tam was bound to get caught up in Batman's crusade against Gotham's criminals no matter what. Except Tam has never been particularly fond of ideas like "destiny" or "fate." And while Luke has always been the one full of _faith_ , Tam's always preferred to keep her focus on the physical plane rather than the spiritual one.

"It means we're good people—you, me, Dad, our whole family. We don't stand for bullies, we try to help where we can, and we know a good thing when we see it," Tam says at last. She checks that Tiffany is secure on her back, then grabs Luke's outstretched hand and lets him hold her to his chest as a mechanism in his suit whirs to life, and they start their slow ascent.

It might be her imagination, but Tam thinks she might see something twinkling in the blackness stretching out above them, and her heart feels lighter than it has in days.

* * *

_Posted in a Gotham warehouse owned by the Noh-Jay Consortium._  


* * *

Pru's just getting in from the last of her afternoon classes when her phone pings to let her know she has a new message. She's in the middle of unlocking the flat's door, and it's enough of a chore just balancing her bag, books, laptop, and keys that by the time she's dropping her books on the floor and shutting the door behind her with her hip, checking her phone has already completely slipped her mind.

"I'm thinking about dropping out of school," she tells Tam as she collapses on the couch beside the other woman. "Red has the right idea; this vigilante business is a bloody full-time job."

"You can't drop out. You have to maintain your cover and GPA to escape the octopus-like grasp of your shady former life," Tam reminds her, not even glancing up from the textbook in her lap. There are many flaws in Tam's argument, the main one being that Tam is an evil minion of hell who wants everyone to suffer through the torture of midterms alongside her.

"I can't understand how people tolerate seventeen consecutive years of schooling," Pru says. "Sometimes I almost miss the days of near-apocalypse. Yes, France was sinking into the ocean or something, but it's France—was there any great loss there?"

"You know, according to my History 1B prof, the Hundred Years War is over. You're supposed to be less anti-French now. International cooperation, the Chunnel, all that jazz."

"And yet, your country is the one that came up with Freedom Fries," Pru reminds her. There's an insistent chirping sound from Pru's bag, her phone cheerfully reminding her of the message from earlier. Sighing, Pru starts digging for the damned thing. Knowing her luck, it's slipped into the lining again.

"Oh, come on. That was _ages_ ago," Tam whinges.

"No, it was, what—right after 9/11, right? Not so long ago." Ugh, stupid phone better not be in limbo along with Pru's missing socks.

"Thirteen years, this fall," Tam says.

Which. Can't be right, can it? Pru leaves off her search, counting backwards. Frowns.

"I was only five," Tam goes on.

But. "I was sixteen," Pru says quietly, because she remembers watching the footage on TV while sprawled on a bed in Turkish hotel room, annoyed that Z'd made her stay behind while he and Owens met a contact. "It was just a couple of years ago." Only it wasn't, was it? It _was_ almost thirteen years ago, but Pru was sixteen at the time, can't be more than nineteen now. But she was born in... 1971? 1974? Ugh, it must be something to do with the stupid timeline changing and everyone's ages getting all screwed up.

No, wait, that can't be right. Because— because— She needs to find her Teen Titans surveillance from last December, because something's niggling at her, something about this _just isn't right_ —

Pru's train of thought abruptly derails when her phone starts chiming _again_ , this time to indicate an incoming call. Tam makes a frustrated sound, grabs the bag from Pru's hands, and pulls the phone out from whatever pocket dimension it was hiding in. Pru doesn't know how Tam does it; she chooses to turn a blind eye to Tam's uncanny abilities, partly since she suspects them to be fueled by blood sacrifices and/or other black magic rituals.

Tam thrusts the phone at Pru, glaring. "Stop leaving the kid hanging."

The screen shows a stylized picture of a dollar sign with legs—only six instead of the requisite eight because secret identities. Also, Pru has standards. With a sigh, Pru thumbs on the voice scrambler and accepts the call. "This better be important, you're interrupting what was shaping up to be a significant personal epiphany."

 _"Did you get a chance to look at it?"_ Lonnie asks in a rush.

"Look at what?" As soon as the words leave her mouth, Pru remembers the earlier message notification. Lowering the phone from her ear, she switches to speakerphone and opens her messages.

 _"The video,"_ Lonnie says. _"My contact at St. Hadrian's came through an hour ago. Apparently she and her friends played nighttime tag with the guy you were interested in? She got it all on video."_

"I'm opening it now," Pru tells him, tapping on the video icon in her inbox.

And stares.

"Wow," Tam murmurs, eyes fixed on the small screen of Pru's phone, "that dude has some serious moves."

Pru makes a strangled noise. She suspected, of course, that's why she asked for video. She suspected and she predicted but it's still something of a shock to actually _see_ it. Though, huh. It's weirdly appropriate that he should be found out this way.

One might even say that augury foretold this happening. (Does it count if the bird doing the predicting isn't of the feathered variety?)

"I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that faceless man just pulled a quadruple somersault," Pru says, feeling more than a little lightheaded and giddy at the prospect of what she's found. Prophesized? (Shouldering the legacy of Oracle was always meant as a joke, never a portent.)

 _"Uh, okay,"_ Lonnie says. _"I don't get it. Is that significant or something?"_

"Oh, M," Pru says, lips spreading in a slow smile as she remembers another boy, babbling in the cold desert night, trying to keep them both awake and aware, forestalling bloodloss-induced blackouts as long as possible with story upon story about his exploits and adventures. "You have no idea."

* * *

> `Oracle: I gave you good material, what's taking so long?`
> 
> `EscarbajoAzul: Okay, so. First off, I don't know where you're getting your info on how I do what I do, but you might want ask for your money back, chica.`
> 
> `Oracle: Kid, you wouldn't believe me if I told you where my intel comes from.`
> 
> `Oracle: You can track people down using their DNA. I gave you DNA, what's the problem?`
> 
> `EscarbajoAzul: That's not — That is an overly-simplified description of my tracking ability. Which you shouldn't even know about.`
> 
> `Oracle: Eh, technicalities. You should be able to use what I gave you to find the target.`
> 
> `EscarbajoAzul: Even supposing my tracking ability *does* search for specific DNA — not that I'm saying it does — the sample you sent me isn't even from the person you're trying to find.`
> 
> `Oracle: Look. I know you're just a kid--`
> 
> `EscarbajoAzul: ExCUSE me!`
> 
> `Oracle: --but my intel says you're pretty smart. Take advanced classes and all that.`
> 
> `Oracle: And even if you don't know about it, there's no way I'll buy that the trigger-happy bug on your back doesn't know about mitochondrial DNA.`
> 
> `EscarbajoAzul: ...you know about Khaji Da?`
> 
> `Oracle: Boyo, you find the target and I'll tell you everything I know about both your bug AND the Reach.`
> 
> `Oracle: But first, you gotta find the girl.`

  


* * *

Stephanie's dad is up to something. This is nothing new—he's _always_ up to something; some job, some scheme, some ridiculously complex plan to get rich at someone else's expense. Honestly, if he bothered to expend as much effort on a real, _legal_ job as he does on his complicated, Rube Goldberg-esque schemes, Stephanie is sure he would've come out further ahead years ago.

Stephanie tried to give him the benefit of the doubt back when Oracle first started sending her stuff about Cluemaster. He may be a crook and a sneak, but he's still her dad. He taught her how to ride a bike (well, was present when she fell repeatedly, teaching herself), held her hand when she was sick (because she wouldn't let go and Stephanie's death grip has never been something to sniff at), stood up against the Batman for her (used her as an excuse to keep the Bat from turning him over to the cops). All of it has to count for something, right? At least, that was what she told Oracle last fall.

At the time, Stephanie had believed it, because he _had_ been doing better since Batman's visit. No more clues to the police, no more costume, no more big scores. Maybe not completely reformed, but. Better.

And then he started having his stupid sewing circle or quiz night or whatever it is with his loser friends. Stephanie isn't an idiot, okay. She _knows_ her dad's buddies are all D-listers like him. Oracle may discourage Stephanie and Moneyspider from patrolling on their own because of the whole legal minors thing, but the boss-lady sure as hell expects all of them to familiarize themselves with the extensive rogue profiles on the warehouse computer. (Stephanie suspects Oracle stole the whole thing from Batman or Red Robin—the woman's obviously not a native Gothamite, and some of those dossiers have a Gotham vibe you just can't fake.)

So, when it all comes down to it, Stephanie has no compunction about hiding one of Oracle's sweet little bugs in her dad's kitchen just before his next get-together. Technically, Stephanie isn't supposed to have access to the _really_ fun toys, but she and Moneyspider have bonded over Oracle being stupidly overprotective and he helps Bluebird make a lot of the good stuff anyway. She has him rig it so it sends whatever it gathers straight to her work phone rather than the team's network. Figures the whole group doesn't need to wonder why Spoiler is eavesdropping on a bunch of third-rate crooks bitching about Batman.

(Rule Three is _important_.)

She expects to get a lot of whining and maybe some info on whatever convenience store her dad wants to knock over this time.

Stephanie Brown does _not_ get what she expected.

**Author's Note:**

> I've at least one more story in this 'verse in me, because I cannot deny Steph and Harper their stellar Batman Eternal scenes.
> 
> If you want to learn about all the headcanons I have for this AU (I have a lot of hcs for it, so many) or you just like my groove, I'm on tumblr over at themandylion.tumblr.com. Fair warning, I'm still learning the whole tumblr thing and I'm not the best at posting, but I'm a very active lurker. So. There you go! :D


End file.
